Start conversation without user interaction in Facebook Messenger - facebook

Is it possible to send a message to a user without the user interacting with the bot first?
I'm using the following guide to retrieve psids from users that have already connected their profile to an app that I own.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/connecting-accounts.
For users that have at least one interaction with a page that I also own, I'm able to get their id. For all other users the endpoint returns an empty array.
Im aware of customer matching but is that the only way to achieve this?

You can't send a message by bot before the user initializes the conversation.
Facebook Messanger Bot permits a standard messages, with a 24-hour interval
to reply to a message initiated by a user. In Some specific cases, Facebook permits to send a message after this time.
A message are triggerd when the user either sends a message to a company or clicks a call button for action in Messenger, or when the user requests a message from a company through a plugin, such as send to Messenger.
Check out the policies here : https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/policy-overview

You are correct, customer matching is your only option for this.
Just learned this today, if you have a user's phone number, you can message them unprompted. You also need the pages_messaging_phone_number permission, which you can only get by paying the $99 customer matching fee.
Check the docs on sending to phone numbers here. Customer matching docs here

Related

User data in event for Facebook server to server

I plan to generate Facebook events (Conversion API) on server side when the user completes registration process. These events will be used for advertising my solution in Facebook and tuning target audience on registration events.
I use POST request to https://graph.facebook.com/v9.0/289777498957502/events to send events. I have to pass user_data entity inside a body of this request. This user data can be email address, click id, user IP address or something else.
I don't have any of these on server side but I can get it.
The problem is that I don't understand why Facebook needs user data and what exactly it needs as data. I can send everything to Facebook but I need to understand mandatory information it requires.
Do you know what should be sent as user data?
As an option I can send internal ID in my system of each user inside user data but I'm not sure Facebook will be happy with that.
Facebook manuals are a pure joke. Literally all are outdated and no information on user data content and why it's required.
The problem is that I don't understand why Facebook needs user data
Because your conversion is (ideally) supposed to get connected to an actual user account. Facebook knows, who the user is, as long as we are on the client side, and their pixel is embedded somewhere - they can make the cross-domain requests in the background, to see who is currently logged-in to Facebook on the device. But if you send conversion data later, from your server - how would they be supposed to associate that with a specific user then, if you don’t send them any data that could identify one?
and what exactly it needs as data.
If you have anything that can uniquely identify the Facebook user, then send that.
Otherwise, send as much data as you can – to increase the posibility, that Facebook will be able to match this to a specific individual.
Check the list they provide under https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/conversions-api/parameters/customer-information-parameters
If the user is logged in to your Facebook app while they are on your site, then send the fb_login_id – that is as unique and specific, as can be.
If you don’t use Facebook login on your site, or the user can also perform the action in question without being logged into your Facebook app - then send whatever you have, that identifies them on your end.
In case no unique match is possible, then send as much as possible - first & last name, phone number, date of birth - all those help to narrow down who the user might be on Facebook’s side.
The same data, or at least as much of it as is available at this time, should also be send with the pixel tracking code on the client side already. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-pixel/advanced/advanced-matching/ has details on that.

How to send message to specific facebook user from website?

My goal is to make a website, in which user could customize a photo and then provide his friends indicators like name or id. My next task is to fetch that info from database and send messages on specific date to provided users. Ex birthday wishes, greetings, and so on.
I studied facebook send api for a few days now and couldn't find solution for myself. If I want to send message, I need to have Page-scoped id of user, which is acquired when the person text you first, which is not desired, because person wouldn't know what it is.
Also I was looking into Customer matching API, also seems to require the same PSID. The next thing I checked was Send Dialog API, which seems to send messages instantly, but not on the specific date. Also I checked unofficial facebook-chat-api, which asks for user ID, whereas I can find my id, I couldn't find ids of my friends.
So I just want to know is it even possible, if yes, I'd really appreciate your help.
User to User communication is not possible (and not allowed) in an automatic way, there is no API for it except for the Send Dialog. The Messenger platform is for page to user communication only.
Do not use inofficial tools, they are not allowed and might get you banned.

Facebook Message Webhook Event : How to identify that the message is a reply/comment of a Page Story?

I have a bot running well receiving messages through the Facebook message webhook event. Everything works well when the user sends messages through the messenger app.
But When a user replies to the page story, it generates an incoming message as if it was a standard one and it's not possible to handle this context which is completely different form a user initiated conversation.
Any idea how to receive to differentiate a "standard" message from a "reply to page story" one ? Thx
There is no way to differentiate between these two entry points/sources. Both will trigger a regular message event with no specific attributes added that would allow you to differentiate the source/entry point.

How can my app facilitate a message to multiple friends?

I have a facebook app that needs to allow a user to send a message to multiple friends (potentially all their friends) at once. This isn't any kind of spam, and I don't need the app to send the message incognito (behind the scenes), I just need to open a dialog with specific friends pre-populated (that the user has selected within my app in a prior step) and then send them a custom message. Is this possible? I see the api for sending a message to a single friend, and I see the API for inviting users to my app (but that's limited to some very small number of invitations per day)... what I need is a dialog that lets me send messages to as many of the user's friends as they want, but for me to control *which friends are selected... I don't want to give them control to add/remove from the friends list.
Is this possible?
No, the Send Dialog allows prefilling only a single friend, but would otherwise be the best option here if you need a custom message displayed to the recipient. You could get the user to send to several friends in a loop by prefilling this - or fire the dialog without prefilling and let the user chose who to send to - your app won't receive a callback with the recipient IDs but you could put a referrer param in the URL sent?
Failing that, the Requests dialog / 'invites' are the only thing you can prefill with multiple recipients without the expectation that your app will be shut down for spam shortly thereafter - there's no limit per day on the number of requests sent, but you don't get to set the message shown to the recipient.
In case this is helpful to anyone else, I just found this... it's a relatively new API (still in beta) that allows for (just about) exactly what I was asking for. I've tested it and it appears to work...
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/08/31/reach-users-1-1-with-the-notifications-api/

Sending messages through application

In a Facebook application, is there anyway I can let a user send a message to another user (to his Inbox)? Even if there is no direct access, is there some kind of a link structure I can use such as:
"facebook.com/example?sendTO=user-id" that will prompt a facebook popup to send a message a user?
Joel
You can't send a message to another user via facebook's apis as no function exist for this. The only way to send personal and private messages are via emails (proxified or not), then the user must install your application and accept to share its email.
Just add "messages" in between the link:
If the persons id is https://www.facebook.com/some.one.007 then write
https://www.facebook.com/messages/some.one.007
Thats it.